It’s FEBRUARY! Which means January, aka the-month-that-feels-like-one-long-Monday, is over. We had a crazy productive January with the Make 2016 Challenge, the free webinar, and the release of A Practical Wedding Workshop Live! Registration closed on the 22nd, but today feels like the first day that I’m truly recovered from the stress/lack of sleep/work of it all. So I’m ready to make February AMAZING.

I spent the weekend in New York! First for a proposal of two of the sweetest human beings I’ve ever met, and then spending quality time with family and friends. The proposal took place in Brooklyn near where my uncle and his family live, so I had the chance to spend the morning discussing the merits of the most recent Star Wars movie with my five- and nine-year-old cousins, enjoying the sarcastic, New-York-style humor of my aunt and uncle.

Then the proposal, which was SO SWEET! Keith & Melanie’s joy was palpable, I loved witnessing and capturing it all!

And then after the proposal, I got to head over to Katherine Bignon’s adorable home to spend time with her sweet family! Sitting at their kitchen table chatting over life and business while their three-year-old Piper sat in my lap and played with my hair was the best finish to a Saturday I’ve known in a long time. And talking about future plans for France travel, styled shoots, and family lit a fire inside me! The Bignon family is good for the soul.

As always, lessons learned/events that transpired over the past week:

• Piper calls Katherine “your Majesty.” Note to self: train my future children to do the same.
• Another hilarious Piper-ism: when she tells you that if you ever cut your hair, to save it and give it to her so that we can glue it onto her head instead. Her words: “it’ll be an adult craft!”
• I love witty church signs. We passed one yesterday in Fairfax that said “Greater love hath no one than to lay down your phone for another.” Amen.
• Fact: Moscow mules are not as good with lemon. So in the future, when I’m all out of limes, I’ll just abstain from having a mule at all, rather than taint the experience with a less-suitable citric varietal.
• I bought a square format camera!! I’m SO EXCITED about this! One of my desires this year is to really hone in on my black & white style. I’ve tried several LR presets and none come quite close enough to what I’m looking for until I started playing with B&W film last year. And I think square format is the PERFECT fit with B&W film, so before I caught my train back to DC yesterday, I stopped into B&H to browse their Used Department, just to see if they had any Contax film inserts in stock. They didn’t, but they DID have a Yashica 124 (see below!) in great condition for an awesome price, so I made a total impulse buy and I’m SO EXCITED about it!! I can’t wait to show you guys what I learned and capture along the way!
• And in all my excitement to shoot a couple of frames before leaving the city, I stopped outside of Penn Station with 15 minutes til my train left, hurriedly trying to load a roll of Ilford while watching a quick how-to video on Youtube. I must have looked like I was struggling (because I was), because I heard a voice say “Do you need help?” And in my head, I though “yeah right, like YOU can help me- this is at LEAST a 30-year-old camera, what are the odds you’ll have any idea how to help?”
  …but then I looked up, and the dude had a twin lens reflex camera on his left shoulder, and a Canon film camera hanging around his neck. What are the odds?! He helped me get my film loaded properly, and even took a light meter reading for me so that I could take the photo of the Empire State Building I’d been hoping to capture before heading into the train station.

My newest addition! SO EXCITED about this!!

Happy Monday, everyone!